Re: [PATCH] arm64: Document requirements for fine grained traps at boot

From: Mark Brown <broonie@kernel.org>
To: Catalin Marinas <catalin.marinas@arm.com>
Cc: Will Deacon <will@kernel.org>,
	linux-arm-kernel@lists.infradead.org,
	Mark Rutland <mark.rutland@arm.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] arm64: Document requirements for fine grained traps at boot
Date: Mon, 29 Mar 2021 18:06:57 +0100	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20210329170657.GH5166@sirena.org.uk> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20210326115541.GC5126@arm.com>

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On Fri, Mar 26, 2021 at 11:55:41AM +0000, Catalin Marinas wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 12, 2021 at 03:49:17PM +0000, Mark Brown wrote:

> > +    - HAFGRTR_EL2, HDFGWTR_EL2, HDFGRTR_EL2, HFGWTR_EL2, HFGRTR_EL2 and
> > +      HFGITR_EL2 must be initialised to 0.

> While this requirement is correct, documenting such individual registers
> doesn't scales well. You may run a 5 year old kernel on a newer CPU and
> we can't predict which control registers have been added and what
> side-effect they have. The architecture, at least for the above

I'm not a huge fan of writing things this way either, I'd inferred that
this sort of minimal and specific thing was the idiom desired so was
trying to follow.

> Can we instead have a broad statement regarding any EL1/EL2 registers
> that they should be either rest to 0 or to the architectural (warm)
> reset value as per the ARM ARM? Or something like any feature must be
> disabled by default at the EL1/EL2 control registers level and this
> would imply the fine-grained traps.

> We currently have this statement:

>   All writable architected system registers at the exception level where
>   the kernel image will be entered must be initialised by software at a
>   higher exception level to prevent execution in an UNKNOWN state.

> The "prevent execution in an UNKNOWN state" needs to be clearer. The
> above should also include exception levels _below_ the one where the
> kernel is entered. It doesn't help if KVM is old and has no clue of new
> EL1-specific registers.

Right, I think both those things are needed to cover the general case.
The exception levels bit is hopefully straightforward but wording for
the clarification bit is more tricky - I'll try to come up with
something.

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